New Ultimate SF Workshop!

Ultimate SF, the annual writing workshop that I lead with Craig Shaw Gardner, will be starting again in October! This is a workshop for serious aspiring SF/F/Horror writers, meeting once a week for ten weeks. For obvious reasons, this is primarily of interest to people in the Boston area. This year, we'll be moving from our old venue at the Pandemonium bookstore in Cambridge to a location, still to be finalized, in Arlington, one town out on the bus line from Harvard Square. (Pandemonium has become too successful as a gaming center to provide space anymore.)

Get your red-hot info online now at: http://www.starrigger.net/workshop.htm. Some details are tentative.

This is an adult-level course, not suited for younger writers. However, young writers looking for guidance can check out my free online course at: http://www.writesf.com.

Come stretch your writing aspirations with us!

Life Sitrep

The reason I've been silent for a while is that life has been pretty chaotic here, not entirely in a good way—but not all bad, either.  In the last few weeks, life in the Carver household has included:

• A serious crisis for one of our daughters, which I can't say much about for privacy reasons, but it involved numerous health-care professionals, many difficult hours, and serious rethinking of educational plans.
• Hospitalization for a third heart attack for my father-in-law—and much soul-searching over what's best for this 87-year-old guy whom everyone loves, and who was once full of energy and activity and life. My wife's in Puerto Rico with him now. I may be heading there soon. Except for:
• Extensive and risky surgery for a good friend, who had his abdomen opened up and his aorta replaced with a Dacron tube. He lives alone and doesn't have much of a support system: grown kids who live far away, and a sister who's here for him, but has some physical disability of her own. That puts me on point for a lot of it. One step at a time, right now trying to get him into a decent rehab place that will take his minimal state-funded health insurance.
• Less dramatic hospital visits for two other friends, just to keep up the medical theme of the month.
• The arrival home of our other daughter from North Carolina, in a car that was threatening to kack on her at any moment. She celebrated her return home with a root canal, then almost immediately headed off for the Utah desert with four friends in two other cars of questionable reliability. ("Don't worry, Dad! We're packing a spare clutch for each car!") Thank God one of the chief park rangers out there is my cousin-in-law. ("Please don't get arrested for drunkenness in the national park. Please." Not that I thought she would.)
• The passing of Calvin, my brother's beloved dog, the world's one and only shag terrier. We miss you, Calvin!

I've probably forgotten a few things. But you get the idea. I'm a little tired. I haven't been getting a lot of other work done.

For some reason, I really like this quote:

"Microbes are a lot like teenagers. They work on their own time, at their own scale. They do what they want when they want." —scientist Christopher Reddy, on oil-eating bacteria somewhere in the BP oil plume, who don't seem to be doing their job